Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Interviews @ CVG, IGN

Choice and consequence, cyberpunk, and augmentation. Choice and consequence are central to all level aspects of the game where the choices you make have a huge impact on what is going to happen to you. But also on the story level where the characters you meet and what you're going to decide affects the story too.

We have a point in the game where you go into a police station to find a brain chip. You can sneak your way in or you can meet an old colleague and try to convince them to let you get in. If you succeed in convincing him, he might go, "Jensen, I'll lose my job."

If you succeed, he's going to come back with a story to tell. Those kinds of things come back over and over again in the game. It's never a binary choice on screen - you just do what you think is right in the circumstances.

IGN AU: The first game allowed you to complete it without killing anyone. Is that still possible in Human Revolution?

Jean-Francois Dugas: Yes – minus the boss fights.

IGN AU: Minus the boss fights? But if you've been honing your sneak skills the whole time, won't you be at a combat disadvantage during these encounters? How do you balance that?

Jean-Francois Dugas: We don't penalize the players. You don't need a specific augmentation or gun for the job; obviously if you're the kind of guy who runs around with a pistol and a few bullets, you're going to find it less interesting [laughs], but in the levels, we're still making sure you have the economy in place so that you can figure out how to deal with that. And we build the levels in such a way that, if you have this or that augmentation, it can be helpful – but it's not mandatory, and it doesn't make the boss fight hellish or whatnot.

We're making sure that players – with their own playing style and the choices they make – aren't penalized for those choke-point moments.